The Gospel of Cynthia
by St Elmo's Fire
Summary: Cynthia plays the Azure Flute.
1. Ten years ago

"I'd like to draw your attention to this cave painting."

Cynthia looked up from her notebook, and startled in surprise. She recognized the image on the projector screen – it was from the ruins behind her house, the painting her grandmother had showed her when she was a girl. Three lights, each slightly elongated to suggest the shape of a creature, arranged in a triangle around a larger light.

"You may have seen this before – the original is in Celestic Town, but it's a fairly popular piece to reproduce for museums," the professor went on. His mouth quirked a very slight smirk before he asked, "Can anyone tell me what it represents?"

Cynthia's hand shot up immediately. She faithfully recounted her grandmother's explanation: "The three lights represent the Trinity."

The professor's smirk grew to a full grin. "Yes, that's the popular interpretation. The three lights represent Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf, the lake spirits commonly worshipped today." He waved an arm languidly. "If you look this picture up on the internet or visit Celestic Town yourself, that's what it'll say: 'Early depiction of the Trinity'. So!" The class jumped at the professor's sudden rise in volume. He leaned back against the wall and looked up at the projector screen with exaggerated curiosity. "Can someone tell me…" He gestured to the points of the triangle, and looked back at the class with a wry smirk. "…where's Azelf in this picture?"

The class went silent for a full second. One student half-raised her hand, hesitantly, but the professor ignored her to bellow, "You can't tell! They're all just blobs, right? So, how do we know this is actually depicting the Trinity? Well actually… we don't!" His expression suddenly turned serious, and he stamped his hands on his desk for emphasis. "This is the most important thing you're going to learn in this class," the professor intoned. "If you take away nothing else, remember this: _interpretation is shaped by pre-existing beliefs_. The lake trinity is what we're familiar with, so we interpret everything through that lens. We see three blobby things in a painting from a thousand years ago and assume that _of course_ they must be the three things we care about now. But we have nothing to back that up!"

The professor clicked ahead a slide. "The number three actually comes up a lot in mythology. Nearly every region has a 'mythic trinity' of some kind. A Kantonian would look at this and say, clearly this is _our_ trinity, Moltres, Articuno, and Zapdos! A Johtonan would say, are you crazy? That's clearly Entei, Suicune, and Raikou – totally different!" A few students laughed, and the professor joined them. "Yes, you see now how silly it is to make assumptions? Kanto and Johto are still arguing to this day over their respective trinities that are plainly different forms of the exact same creatures, no better demonstrated than with Suicune and Articuno – clearly summer and winter forms of the same pokemon. But –" The professor raised a finger and smiled condescendingly. "Do you think that might have something to do with the fact Kanto and Johto have almost no pokemon that take multiple forms?" After a moment, he continued, "Something blindingly obvious can be misinterpreted or missed entirely because a particular culture insists on viewing it through an inaccurate lens. No one in Kanto and Johto today disputes the fact that pokemon are capable of different forms, but they don't reconsider assumptions inherited from a time when no one knew that."

He clicked to the next slide, which contained a smaller crop of the painting and a large number 3. "Why don't we put the question to you, now. Can you think of other 'threes'?"

Cynthia thought for a second. Other "threes"? Did he mean other trinities? He already mentioned the Kanto-Johto trinity. Were there any others? She vaguely recalled hearing something about Hoenn…

The professor's booming voice jolted her out of her thoughts, and she realized someone had already beaten her to the punch. "The three lakes?" the student asked, an uncertain warble turning the statement into a question.

"Yep, yep." The professor nodded. "You mean the three lakes of Sinnoh? Yep, that's a big one. You know about the Lake Heresy? They should teach you that in history class – point is, for a long time it was unquestioned doctrine that the lakes were a reflection of the Trinity, and there were three lakes because there were three spirits. But as people started to learn more about the world, they came to argue that it was the other way around, and the number of lakes was just a coincidence of geography." He shook his head. "Claimed many lives. Yes, you there!"

"Pokemon evolution," Cynthia said. "Pokemon can only have three evolutionary stages."

The professor lit up, practically skipping back to his desk. "Ah, that's a very interesting statement, very interesting indeed. 'Pokemon have three evolutionary stages.' That's something 'everyone knows'. But is it really true? Think about it. Plenty of pokemon have only two stages, and some don't evolve at all. Now people will say what they meant was important is that the _maximum_ is three stages. But that's not true either. There are pokemon families with alternate 'third' stages, like ralts – or eevee, which we just discovered a _ninth_ stage for! So then people say, well, any _individual_ pokemon can still only _experience_ a maximum of three forms over the course of its life, but even that's been proven wrong by the discovery of mega evolution."

He clicked to the next slide, and began, "The number three comes up a lot in folklore even aside from mythical pokemon. For example –" He looked up at his own slide, and stopped short, seeming just as surprised as the students. The slide showed paintings of three pokemon Cynthia didn't recognize – a canine, a flatworm, and some kind of gigantic biped, all with the same green-and-black color scheme. "Oh!" he laughed after a second. "Right, I put this first – uh –" He coughed, and faced the class again. "This is actually very exciting. Over in Kalos they have another trinity, the three pokemon you see here. But just recently researchers witnessed one of these pokemon transforming into the other, proving that they are actually only different forms of the same pokemon! Or, well –" He waved a hand dismissively. "The Lumiose Institute is insisting that just because the worm changed into the canine doesn't prove the biped is also the same pokemon, but…" He gave a knowing shrug. "…preliminary research is already showing that the worm is capable of absorbing more cells, so people are pretty certain we'll see at least one more form. Perhaps this would've been realized earlier if we had focused on the fact of the matter, three pokemon that showed signs of some relationship to each other but with no clear evidence pointing toward what that relationship was, instead of picking one option and assuming that was right until explicitly disproven by the weight of evidence."

This time when he clicked ahead, the professor made sure to check the slide – another display of the cave painting, with space for notes underneath – and gave a small, "Aha." Then, "So, let's go back to this. First off, let's list what we can see for certain here. Each of the lights seem to be the same size. And we can tell one thing from that, which is that we aren't meant to be able to identify them by their image. Either they are interchangeable, or their position identifies them. This actually doesn't fit well with the lake trinity, where each is meant to represent a separate, specific virtue. In confirmed Trinity iconography, they are always individually identifiable, usually by color if nothing else. So, let's see what we can infer from their positions. We see the lights are arranged in a triangle, one above and two below, surrounding a central point." He looked out over the class. "Is anyone here familiar with Draconid mythology?"

The students exchanged glances with each other. The professor waved his hand placatingly. "It's very obscure. The Draconid are an extinct, ancient people who lived in Hoenn. The most complete record we have of their beliefs is from a missionary who lived a hundred years ago. According to their notes, the Draconids believed the world was the domain of two demons, the land and the sea, but they were quelled by a savior from the sky."

The bell rang, and everyone immediately scrabbled for their bags. "For your homework tonight," the professor called over the din, "think of other interpretations that could fit! For example, are there not three stones that evolve eevee?"

Cynthia shouldered her bag and prepared to leave, but something nagged at her. After a moment's hesitation, she approached the professor behind the lectern.

"In the Celestic Town cave painting," she asked, "you talked about the triangle, but what about the fourth light, the one in the center?"

The professor's eyes lit up instantly, and he _beamed_. Cynthia immediately felt a burst of pride. "That is an _excellent_ question," he said. "You're ahead of the game! We'll be discussing that next class." He spoke in a rapid, excited chatter, but Cynthia hung on to every word. "As a preview, well – the popular belief is that it represents the world, and the painting depicts the Trinity creating it. But even assuming the triangle is the Trinity, there are lots of other things they could be creating – a theory currently gaining traction is that it's one of the physical gods, Dialga or Palkia." With a chuckle, he said, "Study up and come with those questions next class!"

Cynthia nodded, and moved aside as another student asked about the homework. She recalled asking her grandmother the same question, and she had given the same response: the world, and the Trinity creating it. The idea it could be something else pulled at her curiosity. She couldn't stop thinking: Why did everyone assume the Trinity were acting upon the central light? Perceptions, assumptions… Everyone 'knew' the Trinity were the supreme forces of the world, but Cynthia had never seen any reason to believe that. What if the light represented something else – a power greater than the Trinity? Her grandmother would call such thinking blasphemous, but the thought gave her a thrill.

Cynthia had taken this class on a whim, but she was already fascinated. She'd have to work hard at her other classes if she wanted to be champion, she knew, but she decided then and there she'd keep Comparative Mythology, no matter the strain on her schedule. There were more secrets to be uncovered here than she had ever imagined.


	2. Now

Cynthia stepped onto the stage, and cleared her throat. The roaring chatter of the assembled reporters died down.

Everyone had seen the video, by this point. They saw her play the flute at Spear Pillar, and they saw the things that answered her call. Her phone had been ringing off the hook for several days. The government told her, politely but forcefully, that it was time for a public statement. She supposed, in hindsight, that she really should have expected something like this would happen. But she had just been too curious, too excited to share her findings with the world.

"Thank you for coming here today," she began. "First, and most importantly, I want to assure everyone there is no cause for alarm. The pokemon have left and the azure flute has been relocated to a secure location."

All the reporters jumped up at once. "Representing the Sinnoh Gazette –" one shouted louder than the others, jabbing a microphone forward. "Does this prove the superiority of the Trinity?"

Cynthia blinked twice, briefly confused. "Well," she said slowly, "pokemon matching the descriptions of Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina did appear –"

"Yes, the avatars of the Trinity," the reporter explained. There was an unnerving glint in his eye, the look of a man who has had his world turned upside-down and is now finding a way to explain how it is still right-side-up. "They appeared to protect you from the wrath of Arceus, opposing the false creator. Is that correct?" The other reporters gave him looks of varying contempt and bafflement.

Cynthia blinked again. She did not recall learning that particular fact in church. "I am… not certain if that is wholly correct," she said carefully. "They appeared for only a short time, but they did not appear to be fighting. But on that topic, I wish to urge everyone –" She raised a hand as the hubbub rose again. "– I wish to urge everyone not to jump to conclusions. We have only confirmed that these beings _exist_, but that should not be surprising; it's been longstanding academic consensus that they did exist in some form. That does not necessarily mean the ancients were correct in their beliefs surrounding these pokemon –"

She was drowned out by shouting, and another reporter jumped up. "But they controlled time and space, just as described in the legends!" she said. "People are arguing that this proves they are the creators of the universe, disproving the superiority of the Trinity and all other religions. Do you have any comment on –"

"That proves nothing!" the Sinnoh Gazette reporter exclaimed. "The Trinity could still have come first. Surely, higher thought and emotion would have to come before the creation of base physical aspects. As Champion Cynthia says, there is no need to jump to conclusions."

"Calm yourselves," a reporter called from the back, her Kalosian accent giving her words a nasally air. "Let us look at this rationally, please. The ancients may have been bedeviled by their power, but we need not be. They are only pokemon."

Cynthia had to stifle a sigh of relief. Finally, someone sensible.

"And no pokemon could have created the universe. After all, God made us in his own image."

There was a brief moment of complete silence. Then, "Well," the Sinnoh Gazette reporter said tightly, "well, that is certainly _one_ opinion, but the Trinity of the Lakes –"

A reporter across the room stood up. "Kanto Times here," she said sharply, "could these pokemon fit in a lake?"

Cynthia stared at her blankly, feeling like she was rapidly losing track of her own press conference. "…Yes?"

"Okay, then." The Kanto reporter snapped at the bickering Sinnohans, "There you have it. They're your lake gods. Now, onto an actually _important_ question," she said, turning back on Cynthia, "how do we know these pokemon will not attack again? You claim they 'left', but do you have any evidence for this?"

Cynthia relaxed. This was easier territory. "I am quite certain that if they were still anywhere on the globe, we would know. They have returned to wherever they were before."

"But that doesn't mean they'll stay there," the reporter insisted, staring her down. "What if they are only preparing for their next move? If they can manipulate space and time, could they not appear at any moment? Will they retaliate against your attack? Have you doomed us all, Champion?"

"Indeed," a thin voice said before Cynthia could respond. She looked for the source, and found it came from a small group in one corner, all wearing the same strange outfit: a jacket studded with Giratina's golden ribs, and a tall hat jutting out with Dialga's crest. "How best may we appease the new gods? Tell us precisely what happened."

The strange man and his entourage were, briefly, more interesting to the reporters than Cynthia herself, and she was grateful for the moment to compose her answer. "Truthfully," she said as the attention turned back to her, "I am not sure if they want anything at all."

The room rose to a clamor again.

"But if you angered Arceus –"

"Didn't Dialga and Palkia protect you?"

"Giratina attacked Arceus, should we be concerned about potential conflict –"

This time she held up her hands for silence. "Please," she said firmly, "let me explain what happened. After I played the summoning melody, Arceus appeared. I am aware there is a popular belief that it was enraged, but it did not look angry or violent to me – only like a luxray with a thorn in its paw. Something was agitating it, but it didn't seem to see any of us as the cause. Though it moved rapidly and erratically, it did not attack me or the other researchers. Then Dialga and Palkia appeared, and…"

She paused, trying to think of how to describe that indescribable moment. She settled on, "...things got _weird_. I would not say they _protected_ me, but nor do I believe they were trying to attack us. It was an unpleasant experience, but no one was harmed.

"Dialga and Palkia took places beside Arceus, and it stopped moving. It was only after this that Giratina appeared. Arceus moved towards it, but it did not appear aggressive. Giratina covered it in darkness, and they both disappeared. Dialga and Palkia vanished a moment later, again not paying us any mind."

A skittering sound came to her attention, and her eyes were drawn to the strange group. As one, they had pulled out notepads and were scribbling notes furiously. She stopped for a moment to stare at them. "Honestly," she managed after realizing the silence had stretched out for too long, "I think they just want to be left alone."


	3. Ten thousand years ago

The world is wrong.

The being the humans will call Arceus does not know anything else. They do not know how the hole appeared, do not know what this place is, do not know why this is happening. But they know that this is _wrong_. Everything is too solid too sharp too many _angles_ the space pushing crushing down on them freezing their glorious light into a solid ring of gold stripping their body of its sheen stretching it out tearing them apart. Everything is moving wrong, time flowing in only one direction every moment of existence destroyed forever to move into the next it is terrifying it is suffocating _things should not be this way_.

They writhe and stumble, their too-physical halo now jabbing uncomfortably into their too-solid flesh. They look back, and for an instant they feel hope, the hole they fell through still visible against the fabric of this awful place, but as they try to run towards it the gravity of this world swells to impossible strength, pulling yanking grabbing _throwing_ them back to the ground the moment they try to run upwards like horrible hands grasping at their legs, never letting go.

The hole closes as they watch, helplessly, from the earth below. Its light fades, and they wail in despair.

This is not how it should be. They are a streak of light, above and beyond the forces of the worlds they pass by. How now can they race across the cosmos as they were meant to, trapped, pinned to this impossible place? A light that does not travel is no light at all.

But they are still a being of light. So radiant were they that they could even race the Blinding One, back in the space between worlds. They focus on those memories, the laughter and joy as they streaked across the cosmos, and when they cry out again their brightness spills from their mouth.

The crushing pressure of this reality lifts, for a moment, but at the same time they feel weaker, dimmer. They open their eyes, and see new beings, three, at once a part of them and apart from them. They understand at once: this world reacted to their essence and shaped it into new life, hybrid children of this world and the higher cosmos both.

The one the humans will call Palkia rises first. They unfold themself, all smooth rounded shapes, and around them the unpleasant angles of this space are smoothed as well, expanding out towards infinity. As it should be. The one the humans will call Dialga simply stares out calmly, and the being of light is relieved that they can see their past and future spread out again, the jutting and weaving lines of this creature acting like a dam against the drowning river of this world's time. As it should be. Between them, the shadow of the one the humans will call Giratina rises tall, and their wings of perfect darkness envelop them.

The keeper will fulfill their creator's wish as best they can, encasing them in a world apart from this one, a sanctuary where this reality's impositions cannot reach.

(The construction is almost perfect, but – they are not a god, cannot make a world wholly unique, only a distorted reflection of this one. It still holds a connection to the outside world, a single thread that can unravel the whole thing. It will, over the ages, and eventually humans will learn to pull it themselves; but for now, it holds.)

But before then, the being of light looks out across the world, truly seeing it for the first time. On the other side of the desolate, rocky mountaintop, there is a small group of other creatures they did not notice before. The things are small and two-legged, with appendages on their upper bodies that they stretch towards the being of light, pointing and gesturing. They cry out, unintelligibly, before their noise is blessedly silenced by the keeper's darkness.

How strange, the being thinks as their eyes close, that anything could live here, in this awful place. They almost pity them.

* * *

It may not be obvious, but this fic was actually born from frustration and disappointment with fanon.

I am so, so tired of Western fans turning Arceus into the Judeo-Christian God, right down to assuming it must be the one true god and none of the others are allowed to matter or have their own individual stories. It gravely disappoints me that so much of fandom has just blithely accepted this as fact instead of examining and extrapolating from canon to come up with their own ideas as they do with so many other elements of the world - especially when, quite frankly, it's actively contradictory to canon. I'm sorry, guys, but Arceus isn't worshipped in the pokeverse. Barely anyone even knows it exists. That's canon.

So - hey, why do we have to take myths and legends as fact? Why can't people saying a quadruped "shaped the world with its thousand arms" simply be wrong? Why do we assume a pokemon with a lower stat total than Ultra Necrozma and Mega Rayquaza is the strongest being in the universe? Why does Arceus need to be a god at all?

If you want to read more on this subject, I discuss my theory in **this thread on pokeworld religion (**** topic/216173/174099975/1/Pokeworld-Religion)**.

I actually wrote this fic backwards. I initially just wanted to showcase my theory on Arceus, but I felt like it needed something more. So I added the scene with Cynthia to show the human side of things, but then I felt that couldn't stand on its own, so I added the flashback chapter for additional context. I hope the final product is coherent.

Thank you for reading and please please please don't be afraid to comment, I love everything you have to say no matter how critical or insignificant you think it is!


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